The final fight over whether Auditor General Odysseas Michaelides is fit to continue in his post was battled out at the Supreme Constitutional Court on Friday, with the Attorney General’s legal team arguing Michaelides is incapable of carrying out his duties the way he should.
The claim was rubbished by Michaelides’ team, while the court, which is convening as a council, stated it will not issue a decision before September.
As both legal teams delivered their final arguments, Michaelides’ lawyer Jo Triantafyllides rebutted the claims put forth by AG’s lawyer Dinos Kallis, saying “we’re not living in a dictatorship, we will not watch over every word we say.”
The ongoing case put forth by AG George Savvides is seeking to have Michaelides dismissed on the same count of inappropriate conduct.
Both lawyers centered to the main case history which is that of former deputy AG Rikkos Erotokritou, who was dismissed from his post after the AG at the time Costas Clerides took a case to the Supreme Court on the grounds of inappropriate conduct.
Kallis argued that Erotokritou had called Clerides corrupt twice, leading to his dismissal. In contrast, Michaelides accused the AG and his deputy of committing crimes “multiple times,” including undermining the rule of law and covering up for ministers.
The claim was rubbished by Triantafyllides who said the accusation could not be substantiated.
“Exaggeration has its limits too,” he began saying in his own legal arguments.
Triantafyllides argued the AG’s legal team had referred to what Michaelides “insinuated”. Effectively, this translates to the AG and his deputy interpreting Michaelides’ words “however they want, and in whatever way suits them,” the lawyer said.
He further argued that the AG’s legal team had been collecting Michaelides’ statements for three years in an effort to remove him. He also stressed that Michaelides’ statements should be considered in context.
Triantafyllides rejected comparisons to Erotokritou’s case, noting that Erotokritou had publicly called the AG corrupt and later admitted his accusations were inappropriate and apologised. He accused the AG’s side of portraying Erotokritou as an “angel” and Michaelides as a “monster.”
Triantafyllides put forth that the role of the court in this case is not to punish an official but to protect the public from an official who is either incapable or unfit to perform his duties, resulting to his driving the institution he serves into disrepute.
During his oral arguments, Kallis referred back to the Erotokritou case saying the term ‘inappropriate behaviour’ was interpreted in a way in which the behaviour was deemed as so bad that the individual in question is incapable of carrying out their duties in a way that is proper, honourable and in a way that serves the public interest.
He said Erotokritou was fired for suggesting Clerides had been bribed but in this case, Michaelides accused the AG and his deputy “for a series of other crimes. For these reasons alone, the auditor-general is incapable of exercising his duties.”
He added that the literal wording of Michaelides’ statements was less important than their implication that the legal service is corrupt.
Even if Michaelides was acting out of a defence mechanism, he should have considered his position, and carried himself in a way that is befitting of his role, Kallis said.
The lawyer added that whenever the auditor general took up an issue, it was handled with a “war-like” attitude, amid a stream of letters, social media posts and statements from the audit office, the lawyer added.
Triantafyllides concluded that Michaelides should not be dismissed from his post, with polls illustrating the public considers the audit office as the most trustworthy institution of the country.
He specified the Erotokritou case is a “gospel internationally” as a case of what constitutes inappropriate conduct.
Seeking to demonstrate how rare these cases are, Commonwealth case law has only five cases: one each in Grenada, Gibraltar, the Cayman Islands, Australia and Canada.
Meanwhile in Cyprus, “we managed to have two such cases in a nine-year period.”
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